A China Net report of May 3, republished also on May 3 by Shijiazhuang News (石家庄新闻网), emphasized the beauty and encouragement the official press sees in Xi’s visit to Xinjiang from April 27 to 30, during the days before the attack in Urumqi:

In recent days, State Chairman Xi Jinping carried out a four-day inspection tour in Xinjiang. This was the first time that Chairman Xi came to Xinjiang after the 18th CCP National Congress. His words, “Our Xinjiang is still the most Beautiful”, expressed his sincere feelings, and moved countless people who love these lands at one blow. “Uncle Xi has come at last! The people of Xinjiang see their hope!”, a netizen named Jiebushimusi cheered.

Soldiers of six different nationalities dance and listen to the party – click picture for CCTV coverage.

On May 2, Xinwen Lianbo, again as its first main news story, presented a model-worker Armed-Police hospital in Xinjiang, which had carried out more than one-hundred gallbladder surgeries. The report also noted that May 2014 also marked the 32nd ethnic-unity education month in Xinjiang.

Norway’s prime minister and foreign minister are not going to meet the Dalai Lama when he visits next month, as part of an effort to ease tensions with the world’s second-largest economy, Bloomberg reported on April 23. Views and News from Norway wrote on April 9 that Parliamentary President and a long-time supporter of Tibet, Olemic Thommessen, said he would not be meeting with the exiled spiritual leader because it was more important to repair relations with China. Relations between Oslo and Beijing had been frigid ever since Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, reports the Norwegian English-language website. It was Norway’s – now ruling – Conservative Party, including now prime minister Erna Solberg, who spoke up for human rights issues and Tibet in 2008. The Dalai Lama himself is a Nobel laureate and visits on the 25th anniversary of being awarded the peace prize.

These are strong words of criticism – and as they come from Norwegians, these words are laudable. But before Europeans elsewhere join the condemnations easily, they should pause and think what they or their countries were doing while Norwegian business was kept in the cold by Beijing. In fact, Oslo resisted the pressures for a remarkably long time.

But it is also true that the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo – independent from government in formal terms, but not when it comes to membership and influence – has made a joke of itself in recent years. Awarding Liu Xiaobo was a brave choice, but the award that had preceded it a year earlier – to Barack Obama -, and the one that followed in 2012, to the European Union, were silly (to put it mildly).

Are the current (small-scale, but still bigger than elsewhere) protests only the last echoes from Norway’s better days? Or are they an indication that civil society is picking up important issues where the elites are failing? The Dalai Lama himself has turned more to people-to-people diplomacy in recent years, at least formally.